Cardiff City vs Manchester City and Tottenham vs Swansea: Open Thread

Today’s two Premier League matches feature battles between teams from England and Wales. Not that either club features a ton of English and Welsh players on their team, but don’t tell the football supporters who are going to the match that!

In the English corner, we have Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur going up against, respectively, Cardiff City and Swansea City. In both games, it should be a walk in the park for the English clubs, but I would never underestimate the Welsh. Cardiff are set to give a Premier League debut for Danish striker Andreas Cornelius, so it’ll be revealing to see if the Dane can give Cardiff an X-factor.

For Swansea, who will be confident after a 5-1 first leg victory in the Europa League on Thursday night, the hope is that the Swans will decide to play their attacking style of football in this one rather than the defensive tactics they employed when they played Tottenham at White Hart Lane last season, and lost.

Before, during or after today’s match, join the conversation in the comments section below with fellow soccer fans from around the globe.

About Christopher Harris

Founder and publisher of World Soccer Talk, Christopher Harris is the managing editor of the site. He has been interviewed by The New York Times, The Guardian and several other publications. Plus he has made appearances on NPR, BBC World, CBC, BBC Five Live, talkSPORT and beIN SPORT.
Harris, who has lived in Florida since 1984, has supported Swansea City since 1979. He's also an expert on soccer in South Florida, and got engaged during half-time of a MLS game.
Harris launched EPL Talk in 2005, which was rebranded as World Soccer Talk in 2013.
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61 Responses to Cardiff City vs Manchester City and Tottenham vs Swansea: Open Thread

Missed call by the ref and linesman. My question now is will the ref see a replay of that at halftime and see his mistake and then give Spurs a makeup call in the second half or are the refs forbidden from seeing replays during the match.

It’s something I’ve always wondered. We know with all the replays its easy enough for a manager to see the incident again. If a ref see he’s made a blatant mistake like that I think its only human nature for him to give the benefit of the doubt to Spurs in the second half with any controversial calls that could go either way.

It’s time for Swansea to make some substitutions in midfield. We keep on losing possession. Leon Britton needs to come on for Jose Canas. Wilfried Bony needs to come on for Jonjo Shelvey. Come on Laudrup!

Seems so weird to see Cardiff playing at home in red, but the vast majority of supporters in the crowd are wearing blue, and celebrating Cardiff’s second goal to take the lead (against a team playing in blue).

the problem was that watching on live extra on the computer was about two minutes behind the tv, so manchester city’s second goal had already happened and we found out about it before we saw it on live extra.

And they kept the coverage going in the stadium after the final whistle to let us see the atmosphere, nice job. Fox would have either been in a commercial or in the studio with Warren Barton and Keith Costigan ruining the occasion.

Congratulations to Cardiff City on a fantastic victory today. But it was a bit odd to see owner Vincent Tan walking out on to the pitch and taking away a lot of the applause that Malky Mackay deserved.

Hats off to NBC for staying with the commentators and footage from the stadium. In previous years, I used to hate how FOX would always break in to the commentary as soon as the final whistle was blown. NBC stayed with the commentators and really captured the atmosphere at the Cardiff City Stadium. Love it.

Spurs must sort out the supply to Soldado and his positioning. He’s being starved of the ball. They completely dominated midfield yet it broke down frequently as they approached the box. The game should have been out of sight by half time and Soldado should have had at least 3-4 decent chances. To be honest I noticed Defoe more in his ten minutes than Soldado’s eighty.